Today’s scripture readings tell two different tales of temptation. In the first reading Eve is tempted with a piece of fruit. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…”. Who wouldn’t? In this reading a forbidden fruit is presented as the super food of all super foods. All you need to do is take one bite and you become healthy, wealth and wise. She gives a piece to her husband and he eats too. In today’s gospel reading, after being baptized and led up by the Spirit into the wilderness in order to be seduced by the devil, Jesus is tempted by the prospect of his exceptionality. “If you are the Child of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” If you are the Child of God leap from this tall building in a single bound. If you are the Child of God assume your position as the ruler of the world’s principalities and kingdoms; all this, presumably, for the good of humanity; superman to the rescue. Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He says no to the apple, the pomegranate, the gogi berry; pick your poison.

In an easy reading of these two stories, Eve falls prey to temptation. Jesus does not. The traditional interpretation of this juxtaposition generally includes something to do with the fallen, sinful, disobedient nature of woman and man on the one2hand. On the other hand there is the advent of the new Adam where humanity is made new, redeemed by the grace of God through the wisdom of Jesus Christ. And so for Lent (since today is the first Sunday of Lent) we contemplate our sinful nature, our corrupt desires and our weak choices and aspire to the wisdom and courage of Jesus.

But for some reason, perhaps as a Lenten penance, I feel called to resist, if just for a moment, the easy reading…this easy wisdom, in search of something a little more complex and little more humanly familiar. And so I will tell you my own little tale of temptation of a boy, a girl, a pair of scissors and a stuffed bear.

“And God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’”. I don’t thing I said, “…or you shall die” but I definitely said, “don’t you touch this box…don’t you touch these scissors without mommy. We are just practicing for preschool next year. Our little red plastic scissors are for cutting the pieces of paper in our cutting box. Big people cut hair and other important things.” They were definitely forbidden to open the cutting box without supervision. So a few days later, I was horrified when Mary Kate handed me a fist full of her soft curly hair. She didn’t have that much hair to begin with and the gaping hole in the middle of her forehead was dreadful. I looked into her big brown eyes and said, “Why did you do this?” And she said, “I didn’t. Michael did it.” Ah, a classic tempter, he told her she would look pretty. I banished them both to their quiet chairs in the dining room and put the scissors out of reach. Effective consequences to deal with this fall from grace…or so I thought.

A year or so later, I was cleaning Mary Kate’s bedroom. The sun was shining, just right, across the surface of her favorite stuffed panda bear, nestled, lovingly on top of the pillows on her bed. I stood there for a minute…looking. It took me a while to make sense of and bring into focus the haphazard, jagged edges of her panda bear’s fur. I could not believe it. This bear had a haircut. It was her favorite toy. I was mad and sad because her beautiful bear was ruined. This hair wasn’t growing back. That afternoon, after preschool, both Mary Kate and Michael were in her room playing. I stepped into the room ready to dispense my judgment. I picked up her bear and asked about its fur. The both turned toward me and gave me a funny look. They told me that had happened a long time ago. “We’re in preschool now”, they said. “We don’t do that anymore.”

A year earlier, innocently colluding, they had crossed a little line, twice. It looked simple…easy…making things prettier, making things better, with just a little snip. It turned out that the wisdom of haircuts was not as easy as they had thought. They were older now. They knew better. Things were not that easy especially not haircuts. They had made a mistake. And they had learned. This new wisdom was not an easy wisdom. It was a wisdom hard won at least from a preschooler’s perspective. Mary Kate’s panda bear would never be the same. But as it turned out even though he had a really bad haircut, he wasn’t actually ruined, just a little more worn and maybe a little more real. Sixteen years later, this little piece of hard won wisdom still sits on her bed, a thousand miles away, in New York City. He reminds me a little bit of the stuffed bunny in the story The Velveteen Rabbit, who was made more and more and more real by his witness to a lifetime of struggle and love.

Which brings me back to today’s gospel. Parker Palmer, in his book The Active Life, reflects on today’s gospel temptation scene. He says that it would be a mistake to reduce Jesus’ struggle in the wilderness “to a few lines of snappy dialogue”. That would be a reduction of Jesus’ real humanity. Being tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights is code, meant to suggest a long period of time. Jesus comes to this temptation scene with a lifetime of experience and struggle and love. Given his context, we can surmise that he has been witness to the suffering of his people under the weight of oppressive political and religious systems. He could be no stranger to human vulnerability and frailty—his own and others. In the face of this suffering why wouldn’t he be tempted by the thought of an easy wisdom, an easy exceptionality that would conquer such offence, such evil? The people of Israel, his ancestors, had, themselves been down this road of temptation. They wandered 40 years in the desert after erecting an idol in hopes of an easy rescue. In the end, their salvation came down to a practical, hard won kind of wisdom; honor your mother and your father, do not bear false witness, do not steal, do not covet your neighbors goods, love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all. In his encounter with the devil, Jesus comes down on the side of this hard won wisdom that is the essence of his heritage. In his response to the devil’s temptings, He remembers and recalls his struggle as the struggle of the people of Israel toward fullness. He quotes three times from the book of Deuteronomy about what it means to be real, to be fully human, to be a disciple. In response to temptation #1 Jesus says, “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. Bread is necessary but it is not everything.“Feed the hungry and clothe poor” is a word from the mouth of God. It is a Word that calls us beyond our own needs to a love for the neighbor and solidarity with those who suffer. In response to temptation #2 Jesus says, “Do not put your God to the test.” To be fully human means an embrace of our vulnerability. Jesus’ healing of the marginalized, of women, of tax collectors and lepers was astounding not just because he touched and healed these outcasts but also because he did this in the face of great risk to himself; a risk that would culminate in his death on the cross. In response to temptation #3 Jesus says, “Serve only God.” To be fully human is to assume a responsive posture that does not seek dominance but instead seeks to serve. This is a responsive posture that attends to the word of God…feed the hungry…in order to be shaped and formed and made real by the Spirit that is life, that is God.

When it comes right down to it, the temptation in all three of these stories is the same. It has to do with the desire for a way around the vulnerabilities and frailties that go along with being human and the longing for some super food, some superhuman power or some super legislative bill (as the case may be) that might accomplish this desire. The hope is for an easy wisdom that would make things prettier, make them better; an easy wisdom that would guarantee your husband and your children food, health and happiness; an easy wisdom that would impose solutions in situations of strife, forcefully maintain the peace and put an end to conflict in war torn world. But there is also something going on in these stories about the grace of the struggle and the possibility of a hard-won wisdom that comes to us across time in relation to our heritage and our life experience. We know more when we are in preschool then before we were in preschool. We learn through experience that life is not easy. We make mistakes and we live with the consequences of our mistakes. In the process we grow up, we become more compassionate and loving. We become more real. These stories expose a more complex juxtaposition between the innocent (or sometimes ignorant or even arrogant) desire for an easy wisdom and the hard unwillingness to dig deep and embrace the long struggle toward becoming more and more and more. Read a little against the grain, today’s scripture readings call us to a Lenten journey that is less about the contemplation of fallenness and sin more about the embrace of a life long journey that is a struggle for a hard won wisdom that makes us more real, more truly who we are, more fully human.

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“We pray with confidence in the words our Savior gave us, …”

These are the words that introduce the prayer of Jesus in the Roman Rite. It is a phrase I wish to meditate on with you today, for our readings from the prophet Isaiah and from the Gospel of Matthew are all about having confidence in what God is bringing about. A scripture scholar of some note, Richard Sklba, taught me that the prayer of Jesus springs from a confidence that God will not only bring about what we need someday, but also has already brought about what we need for this day.

There is a movement in our readings from an understanding of God’s provident care for the People of Israel collectively to an understanding of
God’s provident care for the individual human being. Isaiah has God saying to the faithful remnant of Israel during the Babylonian Exile, “I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages.”

A little context is in order here.

In all probability this author has already witnessed the first wave of returnees to the area around Jerusalem. One might imagine that those returning from exile would be happy to return home, but home is not a very nice place as it turns out. The Babylonian ruler has allowed the Israelites to return only to the scrubland around Jerusalem with no care at all for how they will eke out an existence.

Others more favored by the ruler have taken over the best land for farming and pasturing flocks of sheep and goats in their absence.
The author of this second hymn of the Suffering Servant has his work cut out for him – how to boost the morale of a people who have been kicked
around at every turn.

The author composes the most touching expression of divine love in the bible, “But Zion said, ‘The Holy One has forsaken me, My God has forgotten me.’ Can a mother forget her nursing child, or show no tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name; Your walls are ever before me.” This is no abstract sort of love.
This is the most concrete statement of our God working on our behalf in time and space. This is God who chooses to be up close and personal.

Not to be outdone, we have Matthew expanding on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to also boost the morale of his community. Matthew has Jesus
addressing not just a collective of followers, but each individual follower, “…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour [cubit] to your span of life?”

This portion of the sermon makes a connection between two important concerns: single hearted dedication to the reign of God, and the practical
needs of everyday living. The Gospel does not ignore the practical necessities of food and clothing but places these cares in the perspective of faith. The accumulation of wealth and possessions is a trap that robs us of the physical, mental and spiritual energy we need to dedicate ourselves to the reign of God.

The act itself of accumulating beyond what I prudently need is part of the problem; the other part of the problem is the attention that my accumulated wealth requires so that I may keep it safe and secure. The reign of God is the only security worth striving for. No one can attempt to put priority on God and possessions without suffering a divided heart. We should not be concerned with the cares of food and clothing as if God
did not exist. This is not an invitation to passivity. The Sermon on the Mount is a call for action – action that proceeds from commitment to the reign of God. Such commitment frees each of us to live fully in the present, rather than be diverted by anxiety about the future.

By way of more concrete application of this text to our lives, let me also present some context of an economic sort. Most of the original audiences for Matthew’s gospel were laborers and peasants with no prospect of social or economic upward mobility; the vast majority of listeners of that gospel would have been the same up until the late middle ages of the European experience. A feudal system kept most people “in their place” economically and socially so that the preacher’s task often came down to telling the serfs to not envy the noble landowner who was ordained by God to oversee possessions, including the serfs.

The European feudal system broke under the weight of commercial interests and the protestant reformation (and the success of the monastic system). The industrial age of the last 150 years produced 3 classes economically, the haves, the have nots and the have a little/want mores. I submit to you that the vast majority hearing this Sermon on the Mount today fit into that last category. Our economic system depends on us ‘have a little/want mores’ to prop up a belief in meritocracy, that if I only work hard enough and smart enough, I will prove I am worthy of the things I can acquire with the money I earned by the sweat of my brow (or the sweat of others’ brows).

The laborer or peasant in Matthew’s time had only the Sabbath day itself as a time of leisure to dedicate to the reign of God. In our own day, many have not even that because they’ve fallen into the trap of acquisition of and accumulation of possessions.

Neither Jesus nor the gospel writer was primarily an ethicist or a moral theologian. Each presented a challenge to followers to cultivate just relationships with others.

Each of us might ask ourselves, “Am I anxious about the right things?” and “Do I dedicate my life to things that are worthy of my call to follow Jesus?”

So I bring this back around to the Prayer of Jesus. This Sunday and the previous 3 Sundays explored the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew’s gospel. The glaring omission in the series is that part of the sermon where Jesus’ followers ask him how they are to pray. Jesus breaks open for his followers not just words but a direct connection with the God of Sarah and Abraham that requires no other intercession than that of the community of believers. It begins with the word “our abba”, not “my abba”. This is the prayer of a community of believers who trust in an up-close and personal God who provides what we need to follow and persevere in The Way of Jesus.

You call us to herald your good news, make us strong and faithful messengers of your reign, free of all anxiety that might be an obstacle to our
calling, we pray … Send your Spirit on the leaders of the world, turn their eyes toward the poor and suffering, we pray … Protect and defend those who are discriminated against because of race, color, class, language or religion, that they may be accorded the rights and dignity which are theirs, we pray … For what else shall we pray? God of tender mercy, give to us, your faithful, a powerful spirit of gratitude; as we celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus, help us spend this day in the spirit of joy he bestowed on us. We ask all these prayers in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

The post Jim Penczykowski's Homily from February 27, 2011 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

“You are the salt of the earth”.

“You are the light of the world”.

“A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket”.

“In the same way, let your light shine before others”.

With these words Jesus names the gathered crowd as salt and as light…as preservers of life and illuminators of wisdom. In a sense he chooses and urges these followers to be bearers of the justice and healing they are seeking.

These words and this sending, in today’s Gospel are familiar to us. But not just because we have heard them read and preached from the pulpit year after year. They are, in fact, foundational metaphors that have become a part of our national psyche and identity.

This parable of the Salt and Light has been the inspiration behind images that political and religious leaders alike have used to inspire peoples, nations and the world. Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy before him claimed the image of the shining city on the hill as a metaphor meant to urge a country toward the fulfillment of an exceptional destiny.

In a speech he gave in 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, “Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, … must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men (and today we would include women) aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities”. In 1989, in his farewell speech to the nation, President Ronald Reagan said “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans’, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace….”

Martin Luther King Jr. claimed the image of the preserving powers of salt in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, written in 1963. In this letter he talks of the remnant from organized religion that found the courage to support the burgeoning civil rights movement. He said, “…some noble souls…have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. They have gone to jail with us…. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times.”

These are mighty words and inspirational rhetoric that echo the wisdom parable that is today’s Gospel. But I am afraid I must confess that these mighty words spoken by mighty men were not among the images that flooded my mind and heart the first time I sat down to ponder and prepare for this reflection. When I read the words of this Gospel, I heard my children singing. I heard them singing the words of a song I’ll bet most of you know—“This little light of mine”. I could hear them signing all the verses. “All around the neighborhood, I’m gonna let it shine”. “Hide it under a bushel, No! I’m gonna let it shine”. “Don’t let anyone blow it out. I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.” They sang it from the back seats of the van as I ran my errands. They sang it marching around the living room and they sang it before they went to bed at night. They loved that song.

The learned the song singing along with a recording by a popular children’s musical artist named Raffi. They hadn’t learned this song at bible camp and did not know it as scriptural. Instead, as they marched around the coffee table in our living room, the words resounded as some sort of spontaneous joyful pronouncement. It was as if they were claiming a birthright and making a promise to full it. “This light is mine and I am letting it shine.”

I shared this memory with my oldest daughter Anne and she exclaimed, “I still love that song”. She went on to tell me that every morning, at the subway station where she catches her train there is a man that plays a saw with a violin bow. The first time she saw him he was playing “This Little Light of Mine”. She said it is a regular part of his repertoire and so she gets to enjoy this song regularly. I don’t know why, but I asked her what he looked like. She said, “Mom, he looks like a homeless person, dirty clothes and a long scraggly beard but he is good at what he does. When I can I give him money because he’s talented and he makes me feel good.”

After I hung up the phone, I found myself wondering what the song, “This Little Light of Mine”, sung by exuberant preschoolers and performed by a homeless subway troubadour had to do with a shining city on a hill that cannot be hidden. There is, here, an inescapable tension between the soaring rhetoric of mighty men and the musical proclamations of children and subway troubadours.

Martin Luther King Jr. cites “the creation of tension as part of the work of nonviolent resisters”. In another part of his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, he confesses, “I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth…. We see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood”.

I would say that the tension that Martin Luther King Jr. embraces and the tension invoked by the dissonance between the image of a shining city on a hill and a subway troubadour’s song of light both come down to a matter of justice. Today’s gospel ends with the caution, “…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the reign of heaven.” For the author of the Gospel of Matthew, the key to heaven is righteousness. But he emphasizes that this righteousness does not abolish the law. Righteousness does not abandon tradition or promote anarchy. Rather righteousness fulfills the law.

And so the question becomes, what does such fulfillment entail? It does not, as Martin Luther King Jr. testified, involve passive resignation or a quiet capitulation that hopes for a better day. I think the words of Isaiah help to bring some clarity. The reading from Isaiah also talks of righteous and the law. The author of this scripture critiques the self serving, law abiding fast of the people of God that would involve a sack cloth and ashes. And then he goes on to say that fast that the Most High chooses is different. The fast that makes God delight and draw near is one that loosens the bonds of injustice. The acceptable fast is the fast that shares our bread with the hungry, brings the homeless poor into our homes, covers the naked and cares for our kin in need. The fast that would inspire

God’s righteous judgment is a fast that lets go of self-serving, literal interpretations of law so that we might be formed by the law’s passion for justice. Isaiah announces that with this fast that is justice our light shall break forth like the dawn and our healing shall spring up quickly”. And so it is, fulfillment comes down to justice.

The readings from Isaiah and Matthew make clear that the gospel call today, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, is not a call to a national exceptionalism that is exclusive or excluding and would be the dark side of a soaring national rhetoric. Yet presidents and religious leaders are right to recognize here a call to the extraordinary. The exceptionalism that Matthew, Isaiah and Paul proclaim and call us to today is not a wisdom that must be secret and hidden. We are all called to the fast that allows our light to break forth like the dawn.

We are all called to be bearers of the justice that will heal us. We have all received it as Spirit. And if we listen closely, we can hear this Spirit as revelation in the voices of children and the music of subway troubadours who proclaim “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

The post Colleen Hartung's Homily from February 6, 2011 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.

A few years before becoming a Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, then a student at Columbia in New York City, was especially fond of his English professor, Mark VanDoren. In his autobiography Merton described how VanDoren entered the lecture hall, already deep in thought,and how he would open the class with a single question, as he stared pensively out the massive windows, wondering if the answer might mystically appear.

“Mark’s questions were very good and if you tried to answer them intelligently,” Merton wrote, “you found yourself saying excellent things that you didn’t know you knew, and that you had, in fact, not known before. He had, so to speak, educed them from you, drawn out something latent within you by his questions.”

Some such process might have been at work in the mind of the 8th century Judean prophet Micah, who rhetorically asks six questions to discern what offering is required to achieve divine favor. Response to each question is an implicit “No. that’s not it.”

Suddenly the ground shifts. Just as for Merton, there appeared for the prophet, a truth he wasn’t aware of. That is, the divine longing isn’t for sacrifice to be appeased, but ethical sensitivity among humans: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. (6:8) That final phrase, “walk humbly with your God,” may be the thread that binds each of our readings together.

It’s also a challenge. Because a dominant human desire is not to be humble but great. Behavior we reward is competitive, aggressive, and self-assured.

Madeleine L’Engle, who wrote a book about Lent, which she called The Irrational Season, quipped that if she would write a book about the Beatitudes, she would call it The Irrational Teaching. The Beatitudes don’t fit. They’re often dismissed as splendid poetry, but are clearly impractical.

The initial context for these words was a local conflict. Matthew’s community had been worshiping in the synagogues, but tension increased between those who were influenced by Jesus’ teaching and those who accepted Torah, the law of Moses as their truth. The beatitudes were presented as an alternative way to try to ease that tension.

In searching for a way to justify Micah’s, the Beatitude’s, and Paul’s stress on humility for our time and our culture, I turned to wisdom of a 12th century Benedictine monk for help. Bernard of Clairvaux. In his time and his culture the biblical meaning of Love had been reduced to, and had become synonymous with, the romantic and erotic and was spread abroad through legends of knights performing valiantly to impress attractive women.

To try to clarify what love really means, Bernard wrote a treatise entitled, “On Loving God.” He outlined four stages in the movement toward what he regarded as authentic love:

The first stage: Loving one’s self for one’s own sake. At this stage we place a premium on taking things into our own hands, developing our self esteem and ego strength, often at the expense of others. Aggression and assertiveness are rewarded. The focus is on me.

But, thought Bernard, the sensitive soul becomes restless, feels inwardly inadequate. Seeking something more, in the second stage the person turns toward God. Yet, love remains self-centered. God is still loved for one’s own sake, for what I can gain from loving God. A cartoon comes to mind: Moses, standing on Mount Sinai, is delivering the commandments to an attentive crowd below. There is one hand, waving eagerly for Moses attention. The caption: “What’s the take away value in all this?”

Then, as if one has crossed a perception divide, the self is no longer our primary focus. Trust is discovered. At this third stage one love’s God for God’s sake.

The final stage is the great gift: Loving one’s self for God’s sake. At this stage, the beatitudes and Paul’s distinction between human and divine wisdom begin to make sense and we begin to see that we can, as Micah advised, walk humbly with God because God has humbled God’s self, has condescended to be among us,to walk with us.

These stages aren’t separate; they’re movements toward a mature faith which is never pure. At every stage we carry trappings of our culture with us. That’s why we return to the liturgy Sunday after Sunday to receive that embodied mercy in order that we might be more merciful. There is a mysterious force in us that wants to pull us backward and whispers into the ears of our heart: “Your hunger and thirst for right to prevail, your longing for a pure heart is futile.” But in that final stage, loving one’s self for God’s sake, a new ego strength is being formed in us to combat those tempting whispers, and for this to happen, humility is the indispensible gift. It opens access for God’s love to pour itself into us. That’s the “something more and more that Sister Lynne spoke of two Sundays ago.

This fourth stage, loving ourselves for God’s sake, constitutes the way of the beloved community into which Amilia will be baptized this morning.

She won’t understand this for a while, but as she grows, she’ll notice a different ordering of relationships here, where life is not shaped by suspicion and self-interest, but by trust and mutuality, by thanksgiving and generosity. She’ll notice peoples’ hunger and thirst for justice and right to prevail, because they not only believe in the resurrection but they internalize the resurrection, and they practice it by walking humbly with God because God walks humbly with them.

The post Ed Beers' Homily from January 30, 2011 appeared first on Holy Wisdom Monastery.